Trust in data and analytics is a non-negotiable priority

Most business leaders today believe in the value of using data and analytics (D&A) throughout their organizations, but say they lack confidence in their ability to measure the effectiveness and impact of D&A, and mistrust the analytics used to help drive decision-making, according to a new survey by KPMG International.

For the report, Building Trust in Analytics, KPMG commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey 2,165 respondents from 10 countries to identify the areas in which businesses are using D&A, and to what extent they lack trust in their D&A models and processes to drive decision-making and desired outcomes.

The report shares insights and recommendations on suggested processes, practices and governance for building trust in D&A using KPMG’s four anchors of trust—a framework for assessing quality, effectiveness, integrity and resilience.

Most businesses, the survey shows, use D&A tools to analyse existing customers (50%), find new customers (48%) and develop new products and services (47%).

Yet, executives do not trust that they are managing their D&A processes effectively to generate desired outcomes and lack the necessary measures to assess the efficacy of those models.

Speaking on the India findings, Prashant Yadav, partner, Analytics, KPMG India said, “India is characterized by its diversity and the same is apparent in the variability of analytics maturity and trust in Indian organizations. KPMG research on building trust in analytics shows that Indian organizations on an average rate themselves marginally higher than global averages on anchors of trust (quality, effectiveness, integrity and resilience) but have a huge gap compared to average scores for geographies such as US and Brazil.

“Indian organizations are more concerned with quality of data than the other anchors such as effectiveness, integrity and resilience. As Indian organizations start using more sophisticated analytics which employs large volumes and sources of data and the complexity of the algorithms becomes increasingly difficult to grasp, they will need to raise the bar on all anchors of trust.

“Currently, the Indian regulatory framework and consumer expectations on matters related to trust in analytics are not very evolved. However, these are likely to evolve fast as analytics becomes more pervasive. It will take just a couple of missteps for significant attention to be focused on this topic by regulators and customers.

“Organizations would be able to insulate themselves from these developments by looking at best practices and regulatory frameworks of developed geographies and design to achieve those standards proactively.

“Recommendations in the KPMG report are a universally applicable framework and apply equally to Indian organizations.